CONDITIONAL planning permission has been granted for the extension of one of the city’s most popular hotels — Vienna Woods.

In April, Pallas Taverns Ltd lodged a planning application with Cork City Council seeking permission to extend the Glanmire-based hotel to provide for 42 new bedrooms, a spa, and additional guest facilities.

The proposals included plans to construct two single-storey extensions to the sides of the hotel to provide lobby, pre-reception and event space, an extension to the existing dining room and additional circulation space.

Also included were plans to construct a three-storey extension over the existing ground floor ballroom to include the spa, additional guest facilities and a terrace at third floor level. The application also sought permission for the retention of a conservatory to the front of the hotel and all ancillary site development works.

The development has now been given the green light, with 23 conditions attached.

One condition stipulates that, in the interests of the protection of the architectural heritage of the area, specifications, method statements, and schedules of works for the new extension shall be prepared by an experienced, registered architect who shall certify upon completion that the works which impact the historic house have been carried out in accordance with good conservation practice.

Speaking to The Echo about the plans when the application was lodged, Vienna Woods Hotel owner Michael Magner said the business took the time during the pandemic to examine the idea of expanding — something which the hotel has been considering for some time.

“Our wedding business, our event business, has always been very strong and one of the issues we always had in Vienna Woods was that we never had enough bedrooms to service the demand for event business in the hotel.

“We used the downtime during Covid to take time to study the ideas and plans,” he said.

“Things will take time to recover and it takes a while to get planning — this isn’t something that we’re going to launch into straight away, this is something that we want to study and assess and then hopefully when things recover we can be best placed to do something like that.”